Related Research Articles
A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets, inert injections, sham surgery, and other procedures.
A randomized controlled trial is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures or other medical treatments.
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments and known interventions that warrant further study and comparison. Clinical trials generate data on dosage, safety and efficacy. They are conducted only after they have received health authority/ethics committee approval in the country where approval of the therapy is sought. These authorities are responsible for vetting the risk/benefit ratio of the trial—their approval does not mean the therapy is 'safe' or effective, only that the trial may be conducted.
In a blind or blinded experiment, information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld until after the experiment is complete. Good blinding can reduce or eliminate experimental biases that arise from a participants' expectations, observer's effect on the participants, observer bias, confirmation bias, and other sources. A blind can be imposed on any participant of an experiment, including subjects, researchers, technicians, data analysts, and evaluators. In some cases, while blinding would be useful, it is impossible or unethical. For example, it is not possible to blind a patient to their treatment in a physical therapy intervention. A good clinical protocol ensures that blinding is as effective as possible within ethical and practical constraints.
Reboxetine, sold under the brand name Edronax among others, is a drug of the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (NRI) class, marketed as an antidepressant by Pfizer for use in the treatment of major depression, although it has also been used off-label for panic disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is approved for use in many countries worldwide, but has not been approved for use in the United States. Although its effectiveness as an antidepressant has been challenged in multiple published reports, its popularity has continued to increase.
A scientific control is an experiment or observation designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the independent variable. This increases the reliability of the results, often through a comparison between control measurements and the other measurements. Scientific controls are a part of the scientific method.
In a randomized experiment, allocation concealment hides the sorting of trial participants into treatment groups so that this knowledge cannot be exploited. Adequate allocation concealment serves to prevent study participants from influencing treatment allocations for subjects. Studies with poor allocation concealment are prone to selection bias.
Pleconaril (Picovir) is an antiviral drug that was being developed by Schering-Plough for prevention of asthma exacerbations and common cold symptoms in patients exposed to picornavirus respiratory infections. Pleconaril, administered either orally or intranasally, is active against viruses in the Picornaviridae family, including Enterovirus and Rhinovirus. It has shown useful activity against the dangerous enterovirus D68.
Dapagliflozin, sold under the brand names Farxiga (US) and Forxiga (EU) among others, is a medication used to treat type 2 diabetes. It is also used to treat adults with heart failure and chronic kidney disease.
Treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is variable and uncertain, and the condition is primarily managed rather than cured.
The Jadad scale, sometimes known as Jadad scoring or the Oxford quality scoring system, is a procedure to independently assess the methodological quality of a clinical trial. It is named after Colombian physician Alex Jadad who in 1996 described a system for allocating such trials a score of between zero and five (rigorous). It is the most widely used such assessment in the world, and as of 2022, its seminal paper has been cited in over 23,000 scientific works.
Placebo-controlled studies are a way of testing a medical therapy in which, in addition to a group of subjects that receives the treatment to be evaluated, a separate control group receives a sham "placebo" treatment which is specifically designed to have no real effect. Placebos are most commonly used in blinded trials, where subjects do not know whether they are receiving real or placebo treatment. Often, there is also a further "natural history" group that does not receive any treatment at all.
Fostamatinib, sold under the brand names Tavalisse and Tavlesse, is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor medication for the treatment of chronic immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). The drug is administered by mouth.
Baricitinib, sold under the brand name Olumiant among others, is a medication used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, alopecia areata, and COVID-19. It acts as an inhibitor of janus kinase (JAK), blocking the subtypes JAK1 and JAK2.
There is a history of clinical research done on glycosaminoglycans, especially glucosamine and chondroitin, for the treatment of arthritis. Since glucosamine is a precursor for glycosaminoglycans, and glycosaminoglycans are major components of cartilage, ingesting glucosamine might nourish joints, and thereby alleviate arthritis symptoms.
Durvalumab is an FDA-approved immunotherapy for cancer, developed by Medimmune/AstraZeneca. It is a human immunoglobulin G1 kappa (IgG1κ) monoclonal antibody that blocks the interaction of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) with the PD-1 (CD279).
Clive Ballard is a British, world-leading expert in dementia. He is currently Professor of Age-Related Diseases at the University of Exeter and Interim Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the University of Exeter Medical School.
A code-break procedure is a set of rules which determine when planned unblinding should occur in a blinded experiment. FDA guidelines recommend that sponsors of blinded trials include a code-break procedure in their standard operating procedure. A code-break procedure should only allow a participant to be unblinded before the conclusion of a trial in the event of an emergency. Code-break usually refers to the unmasking of treatment allocation, but can refer to any form of unblinding.
ZF2001, trade-named Zifivax or ZF-UZ-VAC-2001, is an adjuvanted protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom in collaboration with the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The vaccine candidate is in Phase III trials with 29,000 participants in China, Ecuador, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.
The Sinopharm WIBP COVID-19 vaccine, also known as WIBP-CorV, is one of two inactivated virus COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinopharm. Peer-reviewed results show that the vaccine is 72.8% effective against symptomatic cases and 100% against severe cases. The other inactivated virus COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinopharm is the BIBP vaccine (BBIBP-CorV) which is comparably more successful. 1 billion doses are expected to be produced per year.
References
- 1 2 "Open label study". National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health. 2020. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- ↑ "Double-blind (trial)". Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. 2020. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- ↑ "Double-blind study". HIV.gov, Office of AIDS Research, US National Institutes of Health. 2020. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- 1 2 Beyer-Westendorf, J.; Buller, H. (2011). "External and internal validity of open label or double-blind trials in oral anticoagulation: better, worse or just different?". Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. 9 (11): 2153–2158. doi: 10.1111/j.1538-7836.2011.04507.x . ISSN 1538-7933. PMID 21920015.
- ↑ Ballou, Sarah; Kaptchuk, Ted J.; Hirsch, William; Nee, Judy; Iturrino, Johanna; Hall, Kathryn T.; Kelley, John M.; Cheng, Vivian; Kirsch, Irving; Jacobson, Eric; Conboy, Lisa; Lembo, Anthony; Davis, Roger B. (25 May 2017). "Open-label versus double-blind placebo treatment in irritable bowel syndrome: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial". Trials. 18 (1): 234. doi: 10.1186/s13063-017-1964-x . ISSN 1745-6215. PMC 5445390 . PMID 28545508.